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BURROUGHS, Stephen (1765-1840). Memoirs. Hanover, NH.: Benjamin True, 1798 and Boston: Caleb Bingham, 1804.
BURROUGHS, Stephen (1765-1840). Memoirs. Hanover, NH.: Benjamin True, 1798 and Boston: Caleb Bingham, 1804. 2 volumes, 8 o (210 x 124 mm) and 12 o (172 x 107 mm). (Both volumes with some browning and staining, portrait of Burroughs from a newspaper pasted to verso of title of vol. 2.) Modern cloth and contemporary calf (covers detached). Provenance : Thomas W. Streeter (bookplate; his sale part II, Parke Bernet 19 April 1967, lot 724; purchased from Whitman Bennett, 1943). FIRST EDITION of Burroughs's complete Memoirs with the rare second volume not mentioned by Sabin. A classic account of the life of an American rogue: Burroughs remarks in his Memoirs that he was "the terror of the people where I lived, and all were unanimous in declaring, that Stephen Burroughs was the worst boy in town, and those who could get him whipped were most worthy of esteem." After a short service in the military, Burroughs studied briefly at Dartmouth, became a privateer and then posed as a ship's surgeon, as a clergyman at Pelham, Mass., was arrested, escaped and continued his schemes until his arrest and imprisonment for 3 years in 1785. Eventually he became a tutor and teacher, and abandoned his life of crime. "Picaresque adventures, perhaps somewhat exaggerated, of a New England rogue" (Howes B-1022). Evans 33478; Sabin 9466. (2)